Tech Time Warp of the Week: Watch Billy Idol Get Hip to the Newfangled Internet in 1993

Share

Tech Time Warp of the Week: Watch Billy Idol Get Hip to the Newfangled Internet in 1993

Today, thanks to online services like Twitter, you send a note to Justin Bieber any time you like. The same goes for Lady Gaga, Rihanna, and hundreds of other pop stars.

But in 1993, when Billy Idol went online to chat with fans and promote his new album, Cyberpunk, the idea of a rock star directly interacting with the hoi polloi over the internet was unheard of. It was a bit of internet history, and you can relive it with the video above.

"This means I can be in touch with millions of people, but on my own terms," Idol said of his fan-chat on an early online service called the Well.

In writing and recording his Cyberpunk album, Idol—who has been part of the first wave of punk rock two decades earlier—tapped journalists such as Mondo 2000 editor Gareth Branwyn and Boing Boing editor Mark Frauenfelder to advise him cyberpunk culture and ideology. He even based the opening track on a piece Branwyn wrote for Mondo. And the Well chat was meant to further tap this burgeoning universe.

But the album was was both a critical and commercial flop, and early netizens saw it as an attempt to co-opt cyberculture. Today, if it's remembered at all, it's remembered as a bit of early 1990s retrofuturist kitsch, along side movies like Lawnmower Man.

That said, Cyberpunk was ahead of its time. Idol recorded the album at his home studio using computers to gain more control over the production process. "I'd always really sort of worked through a team of a producer and an engineer, and in the end I think really you felt like you weren't getting as close to your ideas as you could be," he said.

Today's it's standard practice for musicians to record at least parts of their albums on laptops using applications like ProTools. But, just like chatting with fans online, this was brand new in 1993.

Yet what is now considered business as usually was dismissed as being gimmicky at the time. Sometimes we don't recognize the future when it's staring us right in the face.